What do critics find so good about Soul Music? - Music

BasdeWit97

Gender: Male
Age: 27

In most lists there is soul music in the top 10.
For example in the Rolling Stone 500 greatest albums of all time: "What's Going On" on 6.
But I really don't see what's so good about it.
Can someone explain?

ButterThumbz
I always used to wonder if she wore false ears

Gender: Male
Age: 53
Location: O'er the hills and far away

BasdeWit97 wrote:

In most lists there is soul music in the top 10.
For example in the Rolling Stone 500 greatest albums of all time: "What's Going On" on 6.
But I really don't see what's so good about it.
Can someone explain?

Well, I guess that's your loss. I couldn't begin to explain why you don't like it.

BasdeWit97

Gender: Male
Age: 27

ButterThumbz wrote:

Well, I guess that's your loss. I couldn't begin to explain why you don't like it.

It's not that I really don't like it. I just don't know why it's so special.
And maybe you're right, it's possibly my loss.

ButterThumbz
I always used to wonder if she wore false ears

Gender: Male
Age: 53
Location: O'er the hills and far away

BasdeWit97 wrote:

It's not that I really don't like it. I just don't know why it's so special.
And maybe you're right, it's possibly my loss.

Perhaps I sounded a little mean, but if you don't like it, you don't like it and I doubt there's anything I could say that would change that.

Guest

Soul music is perhaps the music which relies most on feeling, and is thus maybe the hardest to pin down in terms of concrete reasons as to why it appeals. My chart includes a great many variations on the soul template, from early '70s concept soul (Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder), to jazz-inflected soul (Gil Scott-Heron), to late '70s/early '80s soft soul (Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear, Luther Vandross, Sade), to jazz-funk (Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock), to neo-soul (Erykah Badu), to soul-infused reggae (Bob Marley's Burnin', Gregory Isaacs), to hip-hop that is heavily reliant on soul or funk samples (Ghostface Killah, Blu & Exile, UGK), to disco (Rose Royce, Diana Ross' Diana), to white boy soul (Dexy's Midnight Runners), to modern R'n'B (TLC, Lauryn Hill), to soulful trip-hop (Massive Attack's Blue Lines), and much in between. Soul has as much variety as any other major genre of popular music, and is full of just as many hidden gems (just yesterday I heard Swamp Dogg's psychedelia-tinged funk masterpiece Total Destruction To The Mind for the first time). There's something about a great soul voice that just manages to allow me to escape the mundanity of the council flat I'm holed up in for the period of time I listen to it; something about a chugging Motown rhythm or a Steve Cropper guitar lick or a lush early Dilla beat or a lovely switch between minor 7ths that makes my skin tingle; something about an earnest lyric of unrequited love or standing strong in the face of adversity or just being thankful for what you've got that makes me think all those cryptic ramblings of Dylan or Yorke or Newsom are just worthless, pretentious, bourgeois whining, and that they should just say what they really mean like decent songwriters, if only for the fleeting moment I'm caught up in one of Curtis' most sincere moments of yearning or one of Marvin's pleas for a fairer world. Soul music is music of the soul. It's all in the name, really.

BasdeWit97

Gender: Male
Age: 27

lethalnezzle wrote:

Soul music is perhaps the music which relies most on feeling, and is thus maybe the hardest to pin down in terms of concrete reasons as to why it appeals. My chart includes a great many variations on the soul template, from early '70s concept soul (Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder), to jazz-inflected soul (Gil Scott-Heron), to late '70s/early '80s soft soul (Marvin Gaye's Here My Dear, Luther Vandross, Sade), to jazz-funk (Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock), to neo-soul (Erykah Badu), to soul-infused reggae (Bob Marley's Burnin', Gregory Isaacs), to hip-hop that is heavily reliant on soul or funk samples (Ghostface Killah, Blu & Exile, UGK), to disco (Rose Royce, Diana Ross' Diana), to white boy soul (Dexy's Midnight Runners), to modern R'n'B (TLC, Lauryn Hill), to soulful trip-hop (Massive Attack's Blue Lines), and much in between. Soul has as much variety as any other major genre of popular music, and is full of just as many hidden gems (just yesterday I heard Swamp Dogg's psychedelia-tinged funk masterpiece Total Destruction To The Mind for the first time). There's something about a great soul voice that just manages to allow me to escape the mundanity of the council flat I'm holed up in for the period of time I listen to it; something about a chugging Motown rhythm or a Steve Cropper guitar lick or a lush early Dilla beat or a lovely switch between minor 7ths that makes my skin tingle; something about an earnest lyric of unrequited love or standing strong in the face of adversity or just being thankful for what you've got that makes me think all those cryptic ramblings of Dylan or Yorke or Newsom are just worthless, pretentious, bourgeois whining, and that they should just say what they really mean like decent songwriters, if only for the fleeting moment I'm caught up in one of Curtis' most sincere moments of yearning or one of Marvin's pleas for a fairer world. Soul music is music of the soul. It's all in the name, really.

Thanks for the explanation Smile